True Hero
by Ignabar
Summary: Isaac Entera lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, one of the most religious cities on the planet. He's always known about the voice in his head, but he knew he was sane. Not like his mom and dad. But then the other voices start to speak up, and life itself went to hell...
1. Genesis

**I do not own The Binding of Isaac. That would be Edward MacMillen. **

**Patient Report: Sarah Entera**

**Diagnosis: Paranoid Schizophrenia, symptoms similar to Jerusalem Syndrome**

**Psychiatrist: Dr. Jacobson, M.D.**

**Clinic: SLC Mental Hospital**

**Report:** Sarah displays remarkable sanity, but schizophrenia manifests subtly. Occasionally, patient will tap twice on nearby furniture, or flush the toilet twice. Has auditory hallucinations of "God," which she uses to justify random acts of violence on her attending nurses. Illness seems genetic in nature, and symptoms increase visibly in the presence of a bible (any version) or family members. Visiting hours have been reduced to none. Potential treatment may require years of monitoring. Are currently administering regular doses of Zyprexa. No known immediate family, no contact information.

xxx

Sarah Jones, born and raised and living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Early in life, she was not an atheist, but an untheist, or someone who has never encountered religion. When she was sixteen, her boyfriend took her to a meeting of the Catholic Church one Sunday, and Sarah fell in love with God. She loved the church, with its quiet atmosphere and friendly patrons, and how the priest would tell stories of today, and marvelous tales of the Ages Past. Stories of Adam and Eve, of homosexuality, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of abortion, of Jesus. To Sarah, Jesus was the be-all and end-all of proof for God. Jesus was his _only son_, and humans killed him for telling the truth.

_But God forgave us anyways_, thought Sarah. She was in church, front row, and with her friends Rebecca and Olivia. Olivia was a Mormon, and her best friends thought that she might be converted. So they threatened her, with fire and brimstone, sin and despair, and cajoled her until she finally caved in and came to a sermon.

Unfortunately, the topic that day was theodicy, the reason God allows human suffering, and the minister's response was to say that life was a test, so live your best! Halfway through, Olivia stood up and screamed "Bullshit!" before stalking out of the church. Sarah's mouth fell open in shock, but Rebecca just rolled her eyes. "Don't worry about it," she confided to Sarah. "Not everyone can be saved. Jesus _did_ say there would be doubters." Sarah relaxed. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Rebecca tugged on Sarah's sleeve again. "Hey, now that I think about it, I have something cool I want to show you. Got time to meet up by the altar after mass?"

Of course, Sarah couldn't resist. She waited patiently until the mass was over, for once not wholeheartedly engrossed in what the Father was saying, and met up with Rebecca at the front less than forty minutes later. "Okay, okay, what's up, Becky?" she asked. Mutely, the other girl stepped forward and slid her hand under the small rim of the altar, feeling under the cloth for something. When she found it, there was a small click, then the whole altar swung forward to reveal a stone passageway, lined with bare light bulbs, leading down into the damp darkness.

"Whoa, what is this?" Sarah breathed. Rebecca smiled knowingly. "It's where we meet God and do His bidding. Coming?"

xxx

Deep underground, the air pressure rose a bit. Sarah guessed that they must have been hundreds of yards underground. After a short walk, they came to a long corridor, lined with bricks and illuminated by the light bulbs with grimy glass and flickering tungsten. The walls dripped moss and damp. Sarah shivered for old and excitement. Rebecca beckoned her on.

"What's with all of these other doors?" asked Sarah, eyeing the countless rows of other passages.

"Oh, those are other ways down. There are lots of people who come here, lots of people who want to know Him. We're almost there, don't worry." Sarah noticed when the light bulbs stopped, to be replaced by hurricane lamps burning steadily. This place had been here for a long time, she reckoned.

Eventually, the hallway flared out into a massive, underground cavern. The high, vaulted ceiling was paneled with wood part of the way up, but the covering petered out to reveal pitch-black stone. At the far end were a few rooms and an altar, making the whole thing look suspiciously like a church, but with one difference: instead of pews, the floor was dominated by a great pentagram, set into the marble floor using a blue mineral. The whole place felt grandiose and mysterious. Sarah could now see that the whole affair involved hundreds of people, because who else could've hollowed out the cave, dug secret tunnels, _bought all of those diamonds?_ It was true; the statues of the Virgin lining the walls clutched precious stones in their clasped wooden hands.

Looking around, Sarah saw plenty of her neighbors and teachers around. A local Spanish teacher kneeled in front of a rosary, repeating not the popular prayer pattern but the mantra: "I am a sinner, I am a sinner, I am a sinner," over and over. The crossing guard for First and Lake near Sarah's house was chatting amicably with Rebecca's father near a thick oak door on their left. It was _incredible_ that Sarah couldn't have known this existed. Doing some mapwork in her head, Sarah figured that the pseudochurch was underneath the western residential neighborhood.

At the very front, a young man (about her age) was standing where the priest might've, gazing out over the crowd. He was tall, with piercing green eyes and raven black hair combed neatly. There were streaks of silver in his hair prematurely, but that just added to his debonair charm. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt emblazoned with "JESUS LOVES YOU!" written across the front, but the massive golden cross around his neck suggested that he was in charge. Suddenly, he looked across the room and waved Rebecca and Sarah over to him

"Hello again, Rebecca!" he said cheerfully. "This must be that Sarah you said you were going to bring. How are you, both of you? It's great to meet you, Ms. Sarah!"

"Well," said Rebecca, "this is Abraham. His grandfather built this place, and his family owns it. Abraham, this is Sarah. Is everyone here?"

Abraham nodded. Stepping up to the microphone, he cleared his throat and waited for silence to fall. When it did, he spoke, suave and confident and jovial and serious all at the same time. "Welcome back, all of you. Today, we have a new member of our congregation, Sarah! This will be her initiation meeting, so let's all give her a special time today. Sarah, if you could go to the center of the star, please?"

Pleased that is was, in fact, a Star of David, Sarah went to the centre of the floor and sat down cross-legged, while Abraham pulled out two books and set them down on the floor. The first was obviously a bible, but the second was a bit more obscure. It had the same drawing on the front as the floor, but was much bigger than the Good Book next to it. Abraham leaned over, let his hands dangle in the air for a minute, then selected the larger book and opened it to a seemingly random page.

"Sarah Jones, are you ready to meet your Creator?" he asked, and red light flooded into the pentagram on the floor. As Abraham chanted Latin verses from the book, Rebecca laughed, the other patrons prayed, and Sarah screamed.

xxx

They were married eight years later. After a decade, Abraham Entera disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving Sarah alone with their only child, Isaac. When their son was two years old, Sarah was found in her house, crying, holding a kitchen knife above his head. At the Salt Lake police station, Sarah eventually admitted that God had begun to question her devotion, and had commanded her to sacrifice her son to Him. At that point, a judge referred her to a clinic, Isaac was put in a foster home, and the whole incident was largely forgotten.

Isaac was left in a foster home, a nice enough one where he was mostly ignored by everyone, left to collect dust as part of the unknown and unimportant... except he wasn't.

xxx

**Addendum**: I suspect that schizophrenia yet compels Sarah to murder her own offspring, no matter the cost to her own psyche. I doubt we will ever be able to return the patient to society.


	2. Exodus

**First chapter was pretty short, so I figure you deserve this too. I, once again, hope you all enjoy my new odyssey.**

xxx

Isaac was a short kid, with black and silver hair and piercing green eyes, but there the similarities with his father ended. His face was rounder, his ears were smaller, and his nose was less pronounced. He was more boyishly cute than handsome, but Isaac wasn't to know that. He'd never even met his father, at least, not that he could remember. His earliest memory was that of his fifth birthday, when his mom tried to kill him again.

It was a strange memory, he'd readily admit, but it wasn't exactly something that had never happened before. In fact, he would've been surprised if his earliest memory wasn't the _first_ time if he hadn't been a baby at the time. The whole thing happened like this:

He was in the foster care of Mrs. And Mr. Faust, the latter of whom was a successful author who'd written multiple books on the topic of Jesus, and he was celebrating his birthday. The whole family was in the backyard, gathered around a cake with five stubby little candles in it and smudged icing from where Jessie had rubbed her finger so as to have more icing earlier. As a result, the text read ' HAPP BIRTAY ISAC' in bloody red. As he leaned back to blow the icing out, a shadow passed over the cake, and suddenly it was very hard to breathe. '_Don't worry about it, you'll be fine,'_ said a voice in his head.

The next thing he knew, Mr. Faust had picked up a knife and cut Sarah Entera's carotid artery. A gratuitous spray of blood splattered all over the small celebration, and Mrs. Faust fell over in a dead faint. Sarah fell back hissing, clapped one hand over her neck, and went for Isaac again with a terrifying determination. Later on, someone told him that Mr. Faust had thrown a rock at his mother, knocking her unconscious, but to the young Isaac it simply appeared that God had intervened and saved his life.

Feeling absurdly triumphant, Isaac got up and started bouncing on his mother's body, until Mr. Faust picked up both him and Jessie and ushered them both inside to safety before he could call the police. Years later, it was explained to him that his mom, a crafty little fox if every there was, had spent months concocting a daring escape plan, involving drugging several other patients at her clinic and then impersonating a nurse, only to waste her newfound freedom to try and kill him again.

_I already knew she really hated me,_ thought Isaac. '_Apparently,'_ said the voice. '_Now come on, you're going to be late for school!'_ The voice in question was something of a mystery to Isaac, who learned early on that mentioning ' the voice' to his parents resulted in nervous glances and gruff admonishments to ' Not Pay It Any Mind Son,' so he never discussed it with anyone else. When he asked it where it came from, Isaac had the sensation of it shrugging its shoulders in his head, and then the voice would admit it wasn't sure where it came from either.

At that exact moment, he had better things to do than be worried about his mental health, because the school bell was nearly ringing. Isaac Entera, fourteen, grade nine, was going to be late for the first time in his life, '_So get going! Hurry up; get out the door, the bell's going to go!'_ He sighed. Sometimes, voices were a pain. "Bye Jessie, bye mom, I gotta go!" he called up the stairs. Mrs. Faust grunted sleepily, but Jessie was already tumbling down the stairs, half dressed. Not that _she_ needed to be worried, grade school started half an hour later than his own. Hi Isaac, bye Isaac," she said, jumping the last four stairs and swinging around him to the kitchen.

The school itself was a quick walk down the street, while Jessie's school was a quick walk the other way, and their house was almost the perfect halfway point between the two. Running now, his backpack swinging precariously on one shoulder, unzipped, Isaac tore down the sidewalk, ran through the doors of school, and made it to first period math before the starting bell rang. Panting like he'd run a marathon, Isaac dropped into his chair and pulled out his homework, which he'd -thankfully- remembered to do.

"Dude, what were you doing?" asked the boy beside him. This was Jacob Lot, one of Isaac's only friends, and he was almost in tears from laughing. Isaac returned this with a disgruntled harrumph. "I slept in." Recovering somewhat, Jacob shook his head. "Bullshit, man, no way. You never sleep in. I don't even think you sleep. C'mon, what was it really?" Isaac was tempted to tell the truth, that he'd spent the time staring in the mirror, envisioning what the voice might look like, if it were real. Of course, it'd been offended by that. _Of course I'm real, buster. Do I _sound_ like I'm not real?_

At that moment, the only math teacher at the school trundled out from behind the ancient and bulky computer on her desk and took centre stage, her heels clicking as she walked to the blackboard. On it she wrote ' GUEST SPEAKER TODAY,' and then said, rather redundantly, "We have a guest speaker today. His name is Father Joseph, and as part of Career Week, he is going to be talking about your potential to take vows and join a congregation. Class?"

As she said this, Father Joseph came in. He was wearing a business suit instead of any sort of clerical garb, but he radiated calmness and authority, and _holiness?_ The voice in Isaac's head suddenly had a lot to say about the priest. '_He isn't a priest, dipshit! Don't trust him, don't listen to him, don't get in a van with him, because for the love of all that's holy, HE ISN'T A PRIEST!'_ Isaac groaned out loud, drawing weird looks from his classmates. _Just, just shut up, all right?_ The voice fell sullenly silent.

It was true, though, the guy was sort of weird. Not that the man really wasn't a priest, but maybe the voice had a point when it accused him of being a child molester.

"Hello there. I recognize a few of you from my own flock, but for those of you who aren't in my congregation, I'm Father Joseph. I'm the priest at St. Teresa's Star, and it's just down the road from here. Today, I'm here to talk to you all about the rites of ordination for Catholic priests, and why some of you might want to follow my path into the holy order."

After that, Isaac tuned the man out. Instead, he started untangling his own problems with the priest. He looked familiar, which wasn't unduly strange in and of itself. Father Joseph was a plain looking man in his mid-thirties, average height, with brown hair and dull blue eyes. He looked like twenty of the people Isaac saw at least once a week walking to school, but there was something else that bothered him. Isaac realized that they really must've known each other, because Joseph kept shooting him looks when he though everyone else was distracted by their own daydreams. This was confirmed when Jacob passed him a note that said: _'dude, that guys looking at you funny. you know him?'_ Isaac rolled his head around and shook ' no' to Jacob, who shrugged and put his face back on the desk. Unusually, the affairs covered all of the first period, much to the chagrin of Isaac's math teacher, who was breathing heavily and bright red when Father Joseph summed up his case.

"… in other words, I hope you've all had some profound thought, and maybe some of you might join me in the cloth someday. At least, you should stop by the house of God every Sunday, to help you make a decision." Here he looked Isaac dead in the eye for a good second or so, before deliberately looking across the room as if he never had. Weird. "… thank you all for your time." Father Joseph left the room, presumably to go to the next one to preach Jesus to the other apostates stuck in grade nine.

'_Hey, I know who he is,'_ said a voice in his head. _A_ voice. Not the same as the other one, who'd been an unwelcome houseguest for as long as Isaac could remember, but an entirely new one. '_That's the guy the Fausts play bridge with on Tuesdays, remember? I think he cheats too, judging by what your parents have to say about him.'_ The other voice was still there, though, which just meant that Isaac was weirder than he'd thought he was.

'_Who're you?'_ asked the original voice. '_Do you have a name?'_

_ 'Sure do,'_ replied the newcomer. '_I'm Cain. You know, I killed my brother Abel? Ha-HA, that's an old one. Seriously though, my name is Cain. And you?'_

_ 'I don't think I have one. Or maybe I do, but I don't remember, not anymore. But you're forgetting your manners, Cain. You haven't said hello to Isaac yet. That's especially rude considering you're in his head.'_

_ 'I'm sorry, Isaac! I'm Cain, pleased to meet you. I think. Is that what people say? I never really knew, and now I know, it's all so sudden!'_

Isaac laughed out loud, standing in front of his locker with his books half in and half out, people bustling around him a sea of faceless bodies, and laughed like he was the only one there. There were not one, but two voice in his head! He wasn't crazy, he was sure of that. Crazy people heard voices that told them to do things, strange things, but his (great, now they were _his_ voices) had polite conversation with each other. It was too weird.

'_No… no problem. Just stay quiet around other people, and we'll get along just fine, Cain. At least you have a name.'_ The original voice made a noise of supreme annoyance. '_Pleased to meet you, whatever.'_

"Excellent," Cain said. Out loud.

**Cliffhanger, ooh! I'm soooooo bad! And… I suck at writing cliffhangers. Sayonara, people.**

**-Ignabar**


	3. Leviticus

It felt like he was floating on a sea of clouds. Underneath the whiteness was a searing black nothing, and above was a bright, careless blue. It would've gone on forever, but Isaac was standing near a wall, so the whole thing must've had limits somewhere. The wall had two massive peepholes, and through them Isaac could see what _he_ saw. Or what the real he saw. By now, he had begun to guess that he was really inside his own head, and that somehow, Cain had replaced him. The main difference between them, Isaac realized, was that Cain as blind in his left eye. As he stood there watching, the left porthole into reality faded to white.

The second theory to be proved correct that day, because Cain's voice suddenly boomed out of the wall. "Uhh, sorry. I didn't mean to do that, honest! I just sort of touched the wall, and then I was-" Isaac, overcome by a feeling of giddiness, kicked off the ground and hovered a few feet above the clouds, spinning endlessly. Apparently, physics didn't apply in this strange reality. Pinwheeling endlessly, Isaac screamed in delight.

"Would you cut that out?" Cain screamed. "That is so distracting, it's not even funny! I can't focus with you acting like you've never been on a rollercoaster ride before."

'_**You think he's annoying? Wait 'till I get going. I swear, some stuff needs to be discussed rationally, but most of it's gotta be ranted about.'**_

"You're still here? Can you both maybe be quiet while I go to- English class? We can talk more later. Unless you want to do this, Isaac?"

' _Nope, knock yourself out dude,'_ Isaac thought. As Cain had drawn on his memory, the cloudy floor of his mind swirled like a pot being stirred, and in the glimpses of the blackness below, he realized that _that_ was the nameless voice that'd plagued him all his life. It was part of him, intrinsically bound, and fat chance he had of getting rid of either of his new taggers-on. Isaac wasn't sure he wanted to know what was underneath the Nameless Voice.

'_**You catch on quickly. Don't worry about Cain; he has to learn about the world again. He's a bit out of touch, but with your memories, he should be fine. I still don't know who I am, which sucks. I thought once- never mind. Lost my train of thought.'**_

_ 'Hey, am I sick? I mean, hearing voices is pretty bad, but I'm starting to wonder if I should be locked up with my mum- my real one, that is. I always knew I was a headcase.'_

_ '**Well, you aren't crazy. I mean, think about it. If you were crazy, wouldn't I be telling you conspiracy theories, or maybe I'd be an alien or something. I don't even know who I am, other than that I'm not you- not entirely. So, I must've come from somewhere, outside of you, and that means you aren't crazy, you just have some involuntary houseguests.'**_

_ 'Thanks so much. I feel totally reassured; with the voice in my head telling me I'm _not_ crazy, and the other one controlling me, and me, floating in my own head! I'll be the one to pass judgment on that, thank you very much. By the way, is it just us in here, or are there any more people who think they can just waltz into my psyche? What about that? Do I need to see a shrink about disassociate whatever disorder?'_

_ **'No one said you had a disorder. Besides, I think telling people would be an astoundingly bad idea. I mean, people say mental illness runs in the family, so you may just be sending yourself to the loony bin without trial. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Seriously, just keep it to yourself. Oh, and you can take over by touching the wall, or just willing it.'**_

'Great. But it's pretty cool in here, so I'm going to stay for a while. I wonder how Cain's doing?'

xxx

It would be fair to say that Cain was out of touch with society. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen light, if ever, and his speaking was rusty. Even with Isaac's repository of Salt Lake City knowledge, it was still possible for him to mess up monumentally and ruin any chance he had of fitting in. Also, he found that he couldn't see out of his left eye, even though Isaac's memories proved that it worked fine. _I must not have a left eye, then,_ he thought.

The memories were telling him the direction of his next class, which was Gym. At least it wasn't English, or history. It was hard enough trying anew language, but having to answer questions in it was way out of his depth. History too, because Isaac's memories were hardly all-encompassing, and he really didn't have any of his own to draw on. He bumped into a few walls on the way there, but Cain eventually adjusted to his lack of an eye, before he walked into any people. After changing into his (Isaac's?) gym shorts, Cain walked out onto the football field, where two dozen other kids were stretching and talking. Isaac's voice, unbidden, sounded in the back of his mind.

_'Just listen to that guy over there, do what he says, don't talk to anyone, rinse and repeat. Any questions?'_

"Yes, lots. What does rinse and- oh, right. But are you sure that guy's really qualified to teach a physical education class? He looks pretty overweight, and it looks like he's sitting in a cross between a car and a golf cart."

'_It's a lawnmower, and yes. Just do it, then you can eat lunch or something. Ask questions then.'_

So Cain was set to running laps around the field in the oppressive may sunshine, with a cloud of flies hovering around him. Although Isaac was in reasonably good shape, Cain was pant and tired after seven laps. To add insult to injury, the coach was riding on his stupid lawnmower tractor, which looked part tank too, now that Cain thought about it, and the rest of the kids were gradually pulling ahead, but Cain just attributed that to his eye, or lack thereof.

"This is terrible. Are we just going to run in circles this whole time," Cain panted, almost out of breath. "The sun! Why is it so hot out here? It's not even summer yet, and I'm sweating bullets." He rolled the cliché around his mouth, liking the feel of it. _Sweating bullets._ It had a better sound than buckets, say, or gallons. _Bullets_. Isaac sure had some great sayings to draw on. It very nearly distracted him from his aching muscles, until a less-than-intelligent fly flew directly into his open mouth. "Bleck!"

Naturally, after the abusive phys-ed class, Cain was only too happy to go back into Isaac's head, rudely shocking Isaac back to reality, where he was aching, sweaty, and hungry. After cleaning up passably, Isaac limped to the cafeteria, where he picked a wall seat, leaned back, and vanished into his own mind, leaving his body to slump forward.

Cain's real body was surprisingly small, which wasn't surprising, if you thought about it. He'd died when he was a child, after all. For practical reasons, he wore a plain black eyepatch over his defunct eye, and his face was rather boyish, with thick red curls and curious blue eyes. Isaac held out his hand to be shaken, but Cain stared at it blankly until Isaac rolled his eyes and explained what it meant.

"You're probably wondering, uh, stuff, right? Honestly, I don't remember much, but that's because I don't have much to remember."

"Humor me Cain, we have time."

"Okay, the beginning? I was born in some desert wasteland just outside the Garden of Eden; a year after my brother was born. After that, we hauled ass through the desert until we came to the northern end of the," he paused, checking Isaac's memories, "Nile River. I figured out of to grow plants, and Abel bred animals.

Basically, I have the dubious distinction of the world's first farmer, but it was difficult stuff. Anyways, God came down upon us and demanded sacrifice from us, and Abel attacked him with a pitchfork…"

Flashback

_A fiery presence descended from the clouds and manifested as a glowing figure of a man. "Hello, grandchildren," it said happily. "I am God." That was when Abel brought up his pitchfork and ran God through. The metal hissed and warped against God's skin, and the deity laughed. "Foolish man, I am your Creator! I am here for sacrifice! In return for your greatest of offerings, I will give you abundance!" With that, he disappeared._

_ It took Adam a while to explain the whole where-did-we-come-from thing, but Abel took it to heart. It was a brilliant deal: in return for one sheep, he would have years of productivity! Cain was skeptical. He would rather make it on his own merit than have to depend on some galactic crutch. Then again, his dysfunctional family was the direct result of his mom screwing with the guy. Maybe it was because he was his mom's favourite (Adam always favoured Abel) but Cain decided he could get away with a smaller offering._

_ Naturally, he didn't, and that night he concocted a plan to pay back his brother. In hindsight, maybe it wasn't such a great idea, but it was ingenious. First, he waited until their father was away hunting and their mother was asleep, then he cleverly lead Abel to a field, where he'd earlier set a large rabbit snare, which caught Abel by the ankle and hoisted him in the air._

_ Cain originally intended to teach him a lesson overnight and come back in the morning, but when he came back, the corpse had been eaten. Maybe by a tiger, but it didn't matter. Ashamed, Cain ran away, but the annoyingly omnipresent man in the sky caught him in no time flat._

_ "Cain, Cain, Cain, where is your brother?" Cain hitched his pants up and rolled his eyes in what he hoped was a dismissive manner. "Am I my brother's keeper?" he asked rhetorically. God was furious, and did what anyone would have done in the circumstances: smote him. In his dying moments, Cain's only thought was that he had shamed his mother._

Flashback End

"Since you're not going anywhere soon, we need to figure out where you came from and why, hopefully to send you back. Do either of you have anything to add?"

_**"Yes. He's here because you saw that priest, Father Joseph. Or the not-priest, I should say. Wow, he was creepy. My guess it that seeing him triggered something, like a memory, and that brought Cain to the surface. For the first time, but maybe again. Now, all we have to do is get answers out of that priest, because I'll bet you anything he's part of it."**_

"Nice. Is 'it' some kind of paranoid conspiracy theory? And how the hell do we press him for answers? We can't just walk up and ask him about ' the voices,' that would be asking for it. We need to go to his house, or better yet-"

"His church," Cain finished. "He'll be expecting us there, so we can literally walk right in and then start looking for clues."

So it was that an unconscious boy in a cafeteria made a plan to get answers, and maybe got more than he bargained for.

xxx

**I should explain this now: Italics are voices in Isaac's head, unless _everyone_ is in his head, in which case it's just regular. But 'The' Voice is going to be bold-italic, to clarify.**

**-Ignabar**


	4. Numbers

Isaac made a right turn at the intersection by his house and went on down the road to St. Teresa's Star, where Father Joseph had said he preached. Being the middle of the afternoon, there were only a few worshippers, but Father Joseph was out in a lawn chair, reading a magazine. Looking both ways apprehensively, Isaac pushed the doors of the church and stepped inside.

The Star, as it was commonly know, had seen better days. There never seemed to be any money to make repairs, so insidious rot and mildew had seeped through the walls and rafters uninhibited, and one or two of the walls had rather large dents in the drywall. The altar was made of a thick granite, decorated prettily with the shapes of waves and clouds and such, and it almost fit in with the bronze vases flanking it, holding dead flowers, or the newly erected statue of St. Teresa, made just after her canonization. On the whole, it was very gloomy compared to the house of worship Isaac had attended every Sunday every since he could remember.

It was still a magnificent building. The stained glass window, in particular, had an unusually large number of pieces, so the cast iron framework was smaller than was recommended, but the result was an attractive phantasm of light streaming through the images of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and others Isaac was simply too lazy to remember.

The only other people in the place were a tired looking alcoholic near the back and a girl with her head bowed in enthusiastic prayer in the front pew. Deciding that one was as good as the other, Isaac sat down next to the man and looked at him expectantly. He was tall, wearing a tan duster with a brown baseball cap on the pew next to him. His eyes were droopy and bloodshot, but they didn't seem very tired to Isaac. Next to the man's hat was a massive sandwich from the only Subway in town, which was an impressive distance away.

"Excuse me, sir," Isaac asked. "What's your name?" The man jerked around like he'd been stung, then relaxed when he saw Isaac. "Oh, hi. Caught me napping. My name's S'Andrew, but people call me Andy. Can I help you?" Andy belched wetly.

Isaac nodded. "Do you know if there are any bible school classes that go on here? Any, I don't know, special activities I can join? Something like that, I guess. I just want to understand scripture better." Which was bullshit. But Andy didn't have to know that.

Andy scratched his chin. It looked like he hadn't shaved in months, but a beard was just too lazy to form. "Well, if you wanted to do something like that, why don't you try Nicole? She's one of the altar servers, and she knows this church like the back of her hand. Either her, or Father Joseph himself, and Father's busy right now. She's right up at the front, there, y'see? She'll be happy to help."

Isaac thanked the man for his time and shook his hand, somewhat reluctantly. It was grimy and calloused. He went up to the front, where the girl was still praying, a rosary wrapped around the fingers of both hands like a cat's cradle. As Isaac got closer, he could start to hear her praying, as well as a whistling noise, probably from the wind coming in a tiny hole in the stained glass window next to the pew. Once again, he sat down and waited for her to notice him. Unlike Andy, Nicole was truly absorbed in prayer, and minutes ticked by without her looking up from her clasped hands.

_**'Go home,'**_said the voice._**'She can't see you, and the rosary takes hours to pray. It'll be dinner time when she's done, and your father isn't going to be happy as it is.**__'_ But then Nicole said "… through the saving power of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen." She put the prayer beads back in her pocket, then jerked to attention like Andy had when she saw Isaac.

"How long have you been sitting next to me?" she asked, feeling awkward. Isaac shrugged. "A couple of minutes. That guy at the back told me to ask you about any sort of Sunday school or whatever, so here I am. Do you guys have a bible study or something I can join? I have nothing better to do with my Sundays, so… yeah."

Nicole stood up and started walking to the altar, and Isaac followed. She had long, wavy blond hair and was either a strangely slow walker, or a deliberately slow walker. She stopped by the altar and took the rosary back out, putting it in a tray-like thing that had been caulked onto the original altar with a sludgy black stuff. "We do have one group here, but you have to have a membership card here to participate."

"Sounds like the YMCA," Isaac said. "What do you guys do there?"

"Oh, we just pray and talk about stuff in the seminar room. What did you say your name was again?"

"I'm Isaac. Nice to meet you."

Nicole turned around and studied Isaac with narrowed eyes. "Your mom wouldn't be Sarah Entera, would she? You sorta look like her and Abraham, 'cause you've got his eyes and hair, but her face, you know?"

"She's my mom, but we aren't exactly on speaking terms. She… gave me up as a baby and that sort of put a damper on our relationship. My parents are the Fausts now. Why do you know that? She might have worshipped here, but I don't know where we lived, so…"

Nicole looked lost in thought for a while, then asked Isaac what denomination of Catholic he was, to which he replied that he wasn't really sure, in turn earning a scowl. Then she said, "I suppose we could admit you, considering what your mother did for us. I'll talk to the Father about it, and we might just be able to squeeze you in, Isaac," she said, putting an unusual emphasis on his name.

"Great, thanks for helping me out, Nicole. I have to go now, but when do you meet, in case you win me a spot?" he asked.

"Just come back tomorrow," Nicole replied, turning back to the pews. "I have to go now too, but maybe we'll meet later," she said, smiling.

Walking out, Isaac had to pass Andy again, who turned lazily to him. "Son," he said, "I hope you know what you're gettin' into,' cause there might not be a way back out." Isaac laughed, even as his gut twisted. "It's a church group!" he said emphatically. "I don't know what could go wrong!" Andy eyed him for another moment. "Folks take this stuff seriously ' round here. Good luck t'ya." Then he turned around and leaned his head against his hands again.

Most troubling of all, walking home, Isaac head a new voice say _'That man was right. I've seen people take religion far too seriously.'_ He wanted to slam his head against a wall to dislodge its unwanted occupants.

xxx

Cain watched, interested, as the black cloud pulsed and contracted and vomited up a new person into the depths of Isaac's metaphysical landscape. He was a tall, thickset man, sporting a brown beard and wavy brown hair, and a long white robe stained the no-colour of dirt and rain from prolonged use. He got up and dusted his toga off, then looked around. "I think," he said, slowly, "that I have been asleep for far too long. Tell me, who are you, and where are we?"

"You know, I just realized that this looks a bit like heaven," Cain said thoughtfully. "I'm Cain, son of, uh, Adam. Pleased to meet you and such. You are?"

Judas tilted his head, as if to absorb the information. "You're Cain? _The_ Cain? I can't say I'm honoured to meet you, but I'm hardly a saint myself. Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples of Jesus. Formerly, anyways, since I died. How long has it been since then?"

Cain nodded towards the black soup under the cloudy thought under his moccasins. "Use that. You're inside the mind of a boy named Isaac, and you can access his memories. They're under your sandals, just focus on them."

_**"Aren't you going to introduce me? Oh wait, you can't, since nobody knows who I am, can you? Even me,"**_ the darkness said unhappily. Two tentacles lanced out of the pool of shadows in a double helix and formed themselves into the black and featureless shape of Isaac. _**"I am, Judas, the reason you are here. Who I am, I don't know, but I do know that I am not from this plane of existence"**_

"Well, all of us are tired of it," Cain admonished. "I'd like to get out of this place, and I'm sure Isaac wants us out of here too. So could you let us go?" The shadowy Isaac's face sprouted a large, toothy white grin that took up most of the lower half of his head. Judas leaned over and whispered, "I think I may vomit."

_**"That's not so easy. I barely understand who I am and what I can do, and almost all of what I do is involuntary. You expect me to work miracles? My theory is that Isaac is in charge of… whatever this is, and what he wants goes. Not that he's the absolute authority of what I can do, because I believe that's whoever put me here. Anyways, nothing important is going to happen until we all get here, so I suggest the both of you spend the time catching up on what's happened in the last couple decades."**_

The shadow Isaac pulled a chair out of the ground, sat down, pulled out a glass of water, and drank some. Judas nodded and sat down himself, and Cain followed suit.

"This is awkward," Cain said eventually. "Why don't we do this the way I did and talk about our feelings?" Judas laughed and shook his head. "My feelings? I feel confused, but that's about it right now!"

The shadow Isaac pointed at Judas. If he'd been the real Isaac, it would've been casual and friendly, but the voice was just creepy. _**"What he **_**meant**_** was for you to tell us about yourself. You're Judas, you have to have a life story, eh?"**_ It smiled again and drank more water. Water, Cain noticed, that was soaking out the souls of its feet and into the stratospheric darkness. Maybe that was how he really fed.

Judas conjured up his own drink. "Brandy. Ooh, the real stuff. I only ever had this during festivals in Israel, it was so expensive. And now? I can have as much as I want, whenever I want it. I only had to be dead. Strange, how these things work?"

Flashback

_ Judas, after betraying Jesus, took his thirty pieces of silver and left town. His years as a disciple had dulled his skill with a blade. All those wasted years spent pandering to that incontinent fool. Jesus. Bah! Judas hopped town and fled to a southern town, where he settled down as the _grizzled loner_ type on the outskirts._

_ He was at heart a nice person. He had only wanted what was best for Jerusalem, and Jesus wasn't it. He was a demagogue, and his followers would lie and kill and die for him, but he was NOT the Son of God. That much was sure. He'd admitted it to Judas one night in his cups, while they were outside some inn vomiting._

_ One day, while walking home from his new job as a plantation worker, Judas stumbled upon a group of men about to take advantage of one of the local young beauties. He'd tried to stop them, and actually managed to take down most of them, when the final one slipped his dagger in between his ribs. By that time, the woman was safe, even if he couldn't say the same of himself. He died alone._

Flashback End

Cain nodded thoughtfully. "I see why you might have done that. Him saying that he was the only son was crock too. Wasn't my dad a son of God too? Such a liar."

Shadow Isaac dispersed his chair and stood up. _**"Touching as that was, I have things to do. Namely, I want to go back to sleeping. It's my favourite pastime**_." The shadowy being melted like an ice cube and smoked its way back into the soup.

xxx

Later, in the shallow tunnel underneath Salt Lake City, Nicole tumbled down the steps and broke into a dead run towards the chamber where Sarah had first met Abraham, years ago. She slid to a stop and nearly stumbled into the pentagram shape on the floor, which would have been bad. For her.

In the center was Abraham, floating nearly a foot off of the ground, both arms extended, the way he'd been for nearly a year in preparation of the coming months. Nicole cleared her throat to get his attention, and Abraham's eyes shot open. They were no longer his original jade green, but solid black. "Yes?"

Nicole threw her arms up in the air in an exaggerated form of surrender. "I don't know how you know, but Isaac came, without encouragement. Do we go on as planned, or is there something I should know before I _indoctrinate_ him?"

Abraham shook his head slowly. The action made him bob up and down a few centimeters. "You know what to do. Be careful, my son has a volatile personality. If he sees something amiss, the whole plan will dissolve. We are counting on you, Lust."

Nicole put one hand over her heart and nodded, but before she went back, she asked, "Why are you doing this? You know my gain, and everyone else's, but why are you doing this?" It was something that had been bothering her ever since she'd learned of The Plan, and who exactly had conceived the mad scheme. Abraham blinked, and when he did, great black tears streamed out of his eyes and down his face. They hissed and spat and vanished into wisps of smoke when they hit the pentagram.

"My reasons are private, sin. Do as you are told, and we may yet succeed. Do your part to sow, and you will reap you portion of our Dark Harvest. Need I say more?" Without saying yes, no, or goodbye, Nicole walked back out the tunnel and up to the surface again. There was work to be done.

xxx

**I hope I'm not making the 'voices in his head' thing too complicated to understand. Basically, voices are (or should be, sometimes I might forget) italics, and the nameless one will be bolded and italics. Just reminding you.**

**-Ignabar**


	5. Deuteronomy

The Faust's weren't adoptive parents, they were simply foster parents. Their charges called them Mr. and Mrs. Faust, not mom and dad, which was hardly many at all. In fact, in recent times they had only taken in two wards of the state: Isaac and Jessie, who didn't really like each other, but that was fine. After all, how many brothers and sisters actually liked each other?

Isaac opened the front door, and there was Jessie: a juggernaut of chaos and disorder, swinging his cell phone around by its lanyard. He groaned internally, but a glint of silver in her other hand made him pause. If it was a hammer, or something equally destructive, his phone was in an untenable situation. "So, Jessie!" he said in a falsely cheery voice, "How are you? Good to see you again, I missed you during school. Say, why don't we-"

"What did you do with my phone?" she interrupted. Isaac swallowed. He _hadn't_ done anything with her phone, but there was no force on earth that could convince her otherwise. Revenge would come if he couldn't produce the phone, but it could certainly be delayed if he invoked the almighty powers of- "Mrs. Faust!" Isaac shouted. "Jessie's lost her phone and now she wants to break mine!"

Mrs. Faust's disembodied head popped up over the railing and peered down at her charges. She was a thin woman, with a long neck and anorexic-looking belly, and she constantly watched calories and ate very little. She was an extremely irritable person, and her parenting methods were harsh and to the point.

"Jessie, give him his cell phone back," she instructed. Fuming, Jessie unwrapped the lanyard from around her wrist.' Think fast,' she mouthed, and then threw the phone at Isaac like a baseball pitch. The thing was, Mrs. Faust wouldn't have seen it from her vantage, so Isaac just had to do his best to catch it, or else risk looking like a fool and responsible for the loss of his phone.

"Sorry, Isaac," Jessie spat through her teeth. "I was just looking for my phone, and I was wondering if you'd seen it. Guess. Not." She stalked off through the house to plot some disconsolate revenge. Mrs. Faust gave Isaac a once-over, as if she could _see_ him lying, then went back to reading her magazine. Mr. Faust, as best Isaac knew, was out working his job as an accountant, and was barely ever home, so the two kids only ever felt the tyrannical rule of his overly aggressive wife.

Today, he was feeling restless. The whole city felt like it had become a nexus for some weird energy, and the voice confirmed it. _**'Something is strange,'**_ it said. _**'I don't like what's happening, but it's centered on you. All we can do is wait until the rest of us show up, and then whoever is in charge will show themselves.'**_

"How do you even know there's someone in charge?" he asked. It was Judas who answered. _'Kid, there's always a higher power, someone pulling the strings. It's only a matter of time before their means, methods, and motives show, if not themselves. I've seen it all the time. Are you sure there have to be _more_ of us? It's already pretty crowded in here.'_

_ **"I'm sure. What more do you want me to do? I've been over this already, and I suspect I'll have to do it again and again, so…"**_

Isaac tuned them all out; Cain, Judas and the voice, and dialed Jacob on his cellphone. It rang for a bit, then it picked up.

"Yo, Isaac, what's up? Hey, don't answer, that's cool, bro. Listen, you wanna go see a movie or something downtown? We're leaving in, like, a few minutes, but if you want to, I can get you in. So?"

That was what Isaac liked about Jacob. He was friendly, attractive and charismatic, so naturally he was friends with everyone. Not only that, but he was always doing something social or another, and always willing to include Isaac, whether they were going to a movie, a sports game, or just tooling around downtown. His presence also seemed to make the voice shut up, which was another reason Isaac like hanging around at the Lot's house.

"Sure man, swing by in a few? Need me to bring anything?"

"Nope, we're set. If you could get tickets though… naw, just kidding. See ya!" He hung up.

_'Wait a second, guys,"_ Judas said. _"You believe what I believe, Isaac, so why aren't you Semitist? I mean Jewish. Why did you have to go and name your religion after that self-righteous prick?'_

Cain laughed. _'Let's see, because most people believe he was the son of God? The people who didn't and think he wasn't kept their religion, but the ones who saw him as God incarnate switched to Christianity, maybe to make him happy? You guys make more sense to me, because nobody _really_ thought Jesus was the son of God.'_

Judas nodded thoughtfully. _'Yeah, I don't think he was either. He never really did any miracles anyways, and he was sort of annoying, how he brought some people back to life and cursed others, then said how he and God were all-merciful and whatever. If I'm Jewish, should I know anything else about how my faith has changed?'_

"You all wear hats now. Red ones, and I think it's called a Yarmulke. You also celebrate bar mitzvahs, but you're a bit old for those now. It's like a baptism though, so you might have to remember when you were born and add six months."

Several minutes later, Cain groaned. _'Why did you have to tell him that? He has one now, one of those stupid whatchamacallits!'_ Isaac called up his subconscious, and there they were: Cain, face in his hands, and Judas Iscariot, with a red cylindrical hat tipped with a gold tassel. _'There, now I fit in with the rest of us,'_ he said, satisfied. The doorbell rang, and Isaac dumped his homework on the table to go get it.

xxx

The movie in question was The Avengers: not the best but certainly not horrible. Most of the movie was dramatic action with only a pretense of plot, and it was ruined for Isaac because his two _guests_ had no end of questions about the movie, ranging from demands to explain the character's powers to how the projection system worked. Nevertheless, Isaac thought it was great.

The large soda got to him right as the Incredible Hulk started trashing the place. He squeezed past two other moviegoers and into the hallway. His pupils contracted to the size of grains of sand in the harsh light of the hallway after the dark of the theatre. After relieving himself, he met someone else strange for the third or fourth time that week. She was serious looking, refilling a plastic water bottle in the water fountain, against theatre rules, and looking nervously left and right. Her dark hair was cut short like a boy's.

She caught him staring at her after a few seconds and walked over, tucking the contraband water under her windbreaker. "Hey, you're Isaac, right? I've heard about you from Nicole at church, she said you were cool. I'm Elizabeth, but everyone just calls me Liz."

"You're Nick's sister?" Nicholas was a kid who'd shown up at the start of the second semester at Isaac's school. His hair was the same colour as hers, only grown out long, and the only time Isaac had ever seen him talk to someone was when he'd asked him about a homework question in the hallway, and he'd said that he needed to meet his sister Elizabeth.

"Yup. He's in there right now," she pointed to The Avengers, "so I have to go back. Catch you later?"

"Actually, I'm in there too. We're missing the good part, so let's get going."

In the depths of Isaac's mind, the tar beneath Cain and Judas' feet started up again. It reached up around the clouds and spilled onto the ground in a cigar shape, and a comical bulge traveled up the voice's appendage like nutrients up an umbilical cord. It filled the tuba and the shadow retracted, leaving the prone form of a woman almost as young as Cain was, with the same reddish hair tied back in a ponytail. She was only wearing a thin layer of leopard print clothes, which Judas quickly realized were actual leopard skins.

_**'Hey Cain, this is your-'**_

_ 'Mother?'_

xxx

The cast just keeps growing! AAAAH! I'm going to neglect characters, I know it! Also, this story is now officially beta read by Tucker's Mayflower.

**Mayflower:**

**-Ignabar**


	6. Joshua

The woman passed out on the floor was indeed Eve. Cain fell onto both knees next to her and hauled her onto an impromptu cot. She was pretty small, Judas reckoned, maybe a couple of years older than Cain himself. True, she and Adam were probably really young when they married (_Did they marry?_ Judas wondered, _Or did they just think of each other as the last two people on earth? Same mindset, I suppose_) but that didn't explain why she was still in her teens. Judas was beginning to wonder if eh was going to end up as the only adult in this stupid little group.

"Mom? _Mom?_ You're alive, right? Yeah, you have a pulse, that's good…"

Isaac, the real one, reappeared inside his mind, this time with a half eaten bag of popcorn. He looked at it, a souvenir of reality, and then cheerfully refilled it to its pre-movie glory. "What's up, guys?" he asked. "Just popping by, just to do a head count. Anyone missing? Man overboard?" He noticed the unconscious Eve, Cain sitting next to her, and Judas sitting on the floor playing solitaire. "Darn it, more of you?"

"Ha ha, it's a riot in here," Judas said. He flipped over a card, then tossed it aside violently. "Cain here gets his mom again. I'm sure that's fine with you, because I think I'd much rather die at this point, or at least be dead. It's boring in your head, Isaac, where's the exit?"

Isaac pointed back at the wall with the windows on it, currently dark. "That way. Have fun, dude." He walked past the confused Judas, who shuffled the cards back together and stood up, wandering curiously over to the wall. He looked at it for a minute, and nothing happened. "Hey Isaac! What-" Which was as far as he got before the wall reached out with white ropey strands and pulled him into the real world.

Isaac sat down next to Cain and Eve, who was just starting to wake up. "You know," Cain said, catching Isaac's gaze. "We're getting new people every time you meet someone new, right?"

"Huh, never thought of it that way. Okay, so?"

"Well, there has to be something connecting all of these people, if they're what makes your little friend barf us up."

"Let's see, Father Joseph, Nicole, and Elizabeth. What do they have in common?"

"Father Joseph and Nicole both go to the church your mom used to, but I'm not sure about 'Liz."

"Not sure about who?" Eve sat up. "I feel like I've been eaten by a rabbit, a really big one. I know, because I have this sharp pain in my side where a really big rabbit's buckteeth would go."

_**"What kind of mutant rabbits do you live with, Lady?"**_ The voice stepped out onto the clouds again as the shadowy doppelganger of Isaac, who looked mortified and awed at the same time. "Dude, that is _so_ creepy."

_**"Welcome aboard, Mrs. Eve. This is our captain, Isaac, and I will be your copilot. We here at Air What-The-Hell hope you enjoy your flight. Airbags are located underneath your seat cushion, which can double as a life preserver in the event of a crash."**_ The voice looked around. _**"Where's Judas?"**_

Isaac pointed at the eye-windows, showing the interior of a car. "That thing is right," said Eve, "what the hell is going on?"

Before anyone could say anything, the shadowy Isaac rose up from the floor and solidified on the ground. In his arms he was holding a surprisingly real-looking cat. _**"I just found him!"**_ he exclaimed. The cat, a thin black tomcat with one white paw and heterochromatic eyes (one blue, one brown) mewed indignantly. He didn't look happy at being held.

_**"This is my cat, Guppy. Say hello to Guppy, everyone!"**_ The cat scratched at the shadow-Isaac, prompting him to drop the irate feline, who stalked off to find a corner somewhere. Finding none, it settled with sitting alertly a fair distance away from the group.

"Hello Guppy," deadpanned Cain and Isaac. The cat cocked its head to one side, flicked an ear, then settled back to its original position. There was silence for a long moment, and then the voice said _**"Aww, don't be like that! C'mere Guppy!"**_ and chased after the cat, who leapt away and raced across the dreamscape.

Cain turned to Isaac. "I guess we should bring mother up to speed, right?" Isaac nodded. "So, Eve, after you died…"

xxx

Judas found himself in the dark of the movie theatre, sitting next to some girl that the Isaac-cyclopedia in his head identified as Elizabeth. He had to admit, she was fairly attractive, even if she was completely out of his league. _But not out of Isaac's,_ Judas thought impishly. _Might as well do the guy a favour while I'm out here._

Judas tapped Elizabeth on the shoulder. "Hey, I was thinking…" he trailed off. Elizabeth turned to her left to respond. "Uh-huh?" she said, absently.

"Like I was saying, I was thinking we could maybe go see another movie sometime this week? I heard-" he paused, looking through the Isaac-cyclopedia, "-Spiderman is coming out, and it's going to be good. Want to come with me?"

Elizabeth switched her full attention away from the movie and onto the shy-looking guy next to her. "Why _Isaac_, are you asking me on a date?" she said roguishly. Judas nodded and pulled out a small handful of popcorn. He wasn't sure what it was, but it sure smelled good. "I don't know, I think I'm busy…" Elizabeth said teasingly.

"Oh, but there's popcorn!" Judas consulted the index of reality in his head. "Think about it! Whatever it is, surely you can put it off to savor the flavor of this stuff, right? It's like buttery sugary deliciousness in convenient handfuls, plus a movie. Are you _positive_ you don't want to come?"

Elizabeth pretended to think about it. "Okay, I'll do it, but only because there's popcorn." She leaned in closer. "By the way, all my friends call me Liz."

xxx

"…we were immortal, or pretty close, anyways, which is why we look so young. I figure we had centuries to go before the end."

Isaac nodded. "That makes sense. I was kind of wondering why you two were both so close in age."

Judas walked back through the wall of eyes, now toting his own bag of popcorn. He pulled a handful out, stuffed it in his face, and mumbled something incoherent. Isaac sighed. "I guess it's time to head back."

Judas held up one hand, stopping him. Isaac waited, perplexed, until the Iscariot swallowed his popcorn in one go. "Mmmm, yeah, this is great! Oh, by the way, remember Elizabeth? Make sure you call her Liz."

"Right." With that, Isaac walked back into the real world. Everyone looked up in time to see, through the windows of Isaac's eyes, Liz pull his face to hers and begin passionately making out. Reactions to this varied.

Judas promptly started laughing, doubling over and slapping his knees. Cain whistled. Eve made a _harrumphing_ noise and said "Children these days. Where do they get off?" The shadow-Isaac started clapping sarcastically. _**"Yes, well done Isaac! I **_**knew**_** you had it in you!"**_ He looked around. _**"What? Too harsh? Geez, he deserved that. Good work, Judas!"**_

xxx

Elizabeth, after exiting the theatre, walked quickly back to her car, while Isaac was still sorting out exactly what had happened. She pulled out a cell phone, dialed six three times, and waited for someone to pick up.

"Hello? Yes, Isaac is the one. Okay. Yes. Yes sir."


	7. Judges

Hell, contrary to popular mortal belief, is not the residency of wicked souls after they die. Rather, it is the collective home of most extradimensional beings, from angels to demons and everything in between. It was true that it was organized in rings, but only three. The outermost is a vast wilderness, home to magical beasts and the like. The middle is the metropolis of Asmodan, and the very center is the fiery domain of Satan, the overseer of devils.

The outer ring needed no oversight, and Satan ruled the Pit, but the city of Asmodan was a complex bureaucracy. The whole ring was home to exiled mages and magical humanoids driven from their natural habitats on the material plane, and as such they needed to be governed. That was the job of beings higher on the demonic hierarchy, and one such was Plague.

Plague, a horseman of the apocalypse, was a professor at the Lethaz University of Arcane Study and the head of the Hell Intelligence Agency, or HIA. He was a gaunt, tall man with wire-rimmed glasses and a sickly green pallor. He perpetually wore a white laboratory coat stained with blood and other fluids, as well as jeans ripped in several places. His hair was white and messy, and looked as though it had never been cut. Despite his appearance, Plague was an extraordinarily sharp being, not only managing many different diseases on Earth but also managing the HIA and spellwriting courses at Lethaz.

He sat in his university office going through paperwork. One of the newly developed wieldings for manipulating the future had accidentally transported its creator there, and there were papers to file. Plague worked to the sound of the clocks hung on the wall, perhaps fifty in all. All of them showed different times, and he did it to keep visitors to his office off balance, as well as to amuse himself.

Directly in front of him, a cloud of smoke burst into being, and was almost immediately vacuumed back into nothingness, revealing the form of an imp. The tiny demon was dull orange, equipped with wings and a barbed tail, standing barely a foot tall, ankles and wrists encircled by wiry grey hair. To many, imps were laughable, but the HIA had use for them. Not only were they one of the few devils that could step through dimensions with impunity, the others being quasits and cats, but their natural gifts were well suited for espionage: they could shield themselves from the perceptions of others, and the venom in their stings caused amnesia, and although their fire magic was weak, they had uncommon control over smoke.

This particular imp was named Nokyal, and she had been assigned the task of watching Isaac Entera by Plague ever since his mother had tried to kill him and given the game away. She saluted Plague and leapt onto his desk, leaving footprints of ash on his paperwork. "Nokyal," he sighed, "why do you do this to me?" The imp laughed and stepped backwards onto the green blotter. "Sir, this is about that cabal you told me about. It's true, they do mean to use Isaac to accomplish something. I really can't tell what, but whatever it is, it's coming soon. We need more damage control in the human world." Plague rolled his eyes and brushed the soot off of his desk. "I told you, Conquest and Death are already on it. Whatever this Abraham is planning, it's nothing they can't handle." Nokyal shook her head. "No, it's bigger than Abraham. He's got some kind of summoning circle, but it's the size of a city! It needs some kind of human conduit, but his followers aren't doing anything."

"So...?"

"So? So the conduit! It must be a specific person, maybe a type of person, maybe just one, but either they can't find this person, or-"

"Or they aren't ready to open the portal yet. I see what you mean, Nokyal. Anything else?"

"Just one. If this portal actually works, sir, whatever comes through... it's going to be big. We might need some mages in on this one. Moses, Elijah, Dee, Machiavelli, someone. We have to be prepared for the worst."

Plague fixed his gaze on his spy. "And do you know what the worst is, miss?" he said severely. Nokyal nodded slowly. "I'm just saying, sir. I need to go now. Duty calls." With that, the smoke gathered around the imp and whisked her away. Plague settled back at his desk.

Aside from microbiology, he devoted much of his time to the study of Infernal Devices, the ancient clockwork and magic engines of mystery powered by human souls. They were banned centuries ago after being used to wage a great war, but those which were older still had uses beyond warfare, and it was these that fascinated the horseman. _'Perhaps,'_ he thought, _'One might well be the answer. But where would I get the souls?'_ He continued to ponder the matter well into the night.

xxx

Elsewhere in the city of Asmodan, a man (the term being used loosely) strolled casually into a back alley behind a Chinese restaurant, continued to the end of the grimy area, and opened a nondescript wooden door at the very end. Once inside, he turned around, shuttered the door's window, withdrew a key and locked it. Assured privacy, he then shed his clothes to reveal that he was made entirely of a thick smoke ranging from a bruised purple to jet-black, billowing and shifting.

The room was a simple square, bare of any furniture or decoration save the large mirror on the wall. Walking up to it, the man ran one smoky hand over its surface and stepped back. The silver reflected first the room, then darkness, and then the interior of the Church of Saint Teresa's Star, specifically Nicole. Her brow furrowed into trenches at the mere sight of him. "Hello, Greed," she said. "I have been trying to contact you for weeks."

Greed's face betrayed nothing. "I apologize, sister. I am running out of safe places to scry you. The HIA are everywhere, following my every move." Nicole was not happy with this. "You will come here immediately, Greed. There is a complication in the plan. I need you to ensure that Isaac is where he needs to be, when he needs to be. That shouldn't be much of a problem for someone of your prowess, you useless bag of wind."

"Alas," Greed deadpanned, "I am indisposed for the next week. I will be most pleased to offer my assistance after I am freed from my current predicament."

"Brother," Lust said warningly."

"Very well. I will arrive shortly... after I have finished my business here." Greed abruptly terminated the conversation. "My sister is terrible," he muttered to himself, before redressing and showing himself out. In the darkened corner of the room, an imp shimmered into view. It pulled out a notepad, scribbled something down, and clicked its fingers. A spark jumped out of its hand and landed on the wooden floor. The imp vanished in a puff of smoke, and the bolthole went up in flames.


	8. Ruth

"Isaac?" It was Elizabeth, but something in her tone told Isaac that she wasn't making a social call. "Yes?"

"Oh, hi. My brother, Nicholas? He wants to talk to you. Says it's important, that you gotta come over now. Afterwards, we can, I dunno, go do something. Spiderman, maybe? What'cha say?"

"Sure. Be right there!" Isaac hung up. It'd been two days since the interesting night in the movie theatre with Jacob, and Isaac had spent the time since acquainting himself with the lodgers in his head. This was the first time Liz had called him since, and although it was simply Nicholas wanting to talk, it still made his stomach turn backflips. Without warning anyone of his departure, he dashed out the front door and ran the few blocks between their houses.

Liz opened the door and gestured upstairs, where loud noises and shouting drifted down the stairs. "See you in a bit," she said, eyes sparkling with mirth. "Hope you survive."

_** "Wow, you sure picked a weird one, Judas."**_

As Isaac ascended to the second floor, the sounds of argument grew louder and louder, until he was eventually standing in front of a bedroom door crisscrossed by fake caution tape and a octagonal red sign that read "GO AWAY". Sweating now, he pushed the door open, and…

The lights were dark, concealing the decorations, but there was a source of illumination sitting on the table in the centre: a portable camping light. It shone on the strangest scene any of them had ever seen, but which Isaac eventually identified as a group of nerds playing the roleplayng game Dungeons & Dragons. A creased piece of paper marked with squares was covered with dorky-looking action figures, one lying on its side.

"I'm telling you, my stat bonus is +4 and 60%! That's clearly enough to hit Dagon for the Strike of a Thousand Songs," one argued, an obese, greasy kid with oily hair and piggy eyes.

"No, Dagon's Will score is 400. You're targeting his Armor Class again, Huck. Try again versus the right defense this time." This time, it was a normal-sounding voice coming from behind a screen covered with motifs of skulls and dice.

"Nicholas, we've gone over this before. Strike of a Thousand Songs targets Will for the daze and on-hit effects, but the auditory damage is 6d20 against the AC," said a lanky kid with cokebottle glasses and cargo pants with dozens of pockets. "Besides, Dagon's True Knowledge is on cooldown for another two rounds."

"Fine. 6d20 is 80, bringing Dagon to-"

"Excuse me," Isaac interrupted, "but Nicholas wanted to talk to me." The other kids looked at the screen expectantly. Nicholas stood up from behind it and walked around the table, his fist closed around something. "Sorry guys, but I have to take this one. Dagon can wait, alright?"

Amidst a chorus of complaints from the thwarted nerds, Nicholas ushered Isaac down the stairs and into the dining room, where they sat at a coffee table. Nicholas let go of whatever was in his hand, revealing several bright red and gold dice with varying sizes. "They're called D's," he explained, "plus the number of sides. The numbers are 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20, so the four is a d4, and the twenty is a d20. It's funny, though," he picked the ordinary die up and held it against the light, "because that makes this regular ol' die a d6. Strange, isn't it?"

"Listen, did you drag me here to discuss the merits of roleplaying games?" Isaac asked, "because if so, I'm outta here."

"No, this is about the voice." Isaac suddenly found breathing very difficult. "You know about-"

"Sure do. Let me tell you now, you're going to fail. I don't need truesight to know that your father's outplayed you at every step of the way. Even then, Abraham is not the only leader. There's another, one that we can't stop as easily."

Isaac hadn't looked past the curtain of raven hair yet, but when he did so, he was surprised to see that Nicholas had heterochromia. One eye was a dark green, the other a black shot through with inhuman red. He swallowed hard. "Nice contacts, dude," he said weakly.

"Nice try, buddy, but they're real. Now, you have a choice. One, you avoid Lust- or does she call herself Nicole?- for the next week or so, and the world falls to darkness."

"_What?_"

"Second, you can play into their trap like they want you to, but that has essentially the same result. Lastly, you can gain their trust, go under the church, and the result is the same. However, if you take the last option, you might have a chance."

"Explain, please, I don't understand! What does my real dad have to do with this? What plan, why darkness? Why do I matter? Can't you help?"

Nicholas dropped the d6, back on the table, where it began spinning on the corner, defying friction and seeming to speed up into a Griffindor-coloured blur. "I can stop the collateral damage for a bit, but it's a bit more complicated than that. Abraham is using you to power a ritual to open a door to hell, by harvesting the ambient power of Cain, Judas, Eve, Magdalene, and Samson.

"If he succeeds, demons will overflow, and the resulting panic will tear Earth's order apart, but if the gate becomes wide enough, something… else… will come through." Nicholas picked up a thin, but absurdly wide deck of cards and began to shuffle. "Care to have your fortune read?" he asked.

"Now, the tarot deck has two parts, but we're just going to use the Major Arcana." He took silence as consent and laid three cards down on the table in a row, and then flipped them over.

"This one here is the past," he said, pointing to the first cards. "and that card is The High Priestess, reversed, meaning a powerful force or entity has been deliberately interfering."

"But we already knew that," Isaac complained. "What good is this?"

"You need to study the past to understand the future. Now, this is the present, Judgement. It can mean rebirth, but here I think it represents a choice you have to make."

"Great."

Nicholas laughed. "You're getting there, so make sure you're ready. Lastly, this is the future. Actually," he paused, then slid the unturned card over and played another next to it. "We have two choices here." He flipped them over.

"Alright, now the first possible consequence is The World. Easy enough, it means success, ending and victory. The other one is Strength, reversed, meaning lack of control, tyranny, and defeat."

"Why are those the only options?" Isaac asked weakly. "Couldn't there be a third option where, I dunno, we get the maximum result for the minimum effort?"

"You should know by now," Nicholas said gravely, "that the universe is never that fair."

xxx

Inside Isaac's head, another shape began to take form on the ground. Listening raptly to Nicholas's explanations and not wanting an interruption, both Cain and Judas (to Eve's horror) tackled Magdalene to the ground and held her there, hands over her mouth.

"Mhhmh," she grunted, before Eve kicked her son off and put Judas in a particularly painful headlock. "Sorry," she said, "they were just watching television. You know men, can't handle interruptions."

"Ugh, my hair is ruined. Do you have any conditioner?"

xxx

"This si great, Nicholas, but how do you expect it to help?"

Nicholas shuffled up the cards and regarded Isaac indifferently. "Man, I could care less. My older brother sent me here to clean up the mess, but for all I care, you humans can all die." He smiled, showing a set of sharp white teeth. Isaac edged away from him on the couch.

"Death is a wonderful thing. It cleans this world, brings about evolution and change, and creates more souls. If it were up to me, we would all just let Earth to itself, but some of the more powerful daemons insist on interfering, so it's our job to balance it out.

But don't think for a second that we're on your side."

Having seen nearly enough of the creepy kid to last a lifetime, Isaac hightailed out of the room, out the front door, and collided with Liz on the porch. "Oh, sorry," he apologized, and she smiled. "My bro's strange, ain't he? Don't let him get to you."

"Yep, couldn't agree more." Isaac squinted against the sun. "Death prophecies and D&D aside, do you want to go see Spiderman?"

xxx

"… and then, like, I was talking with Veronica, but she was totally, like, being _such_ a bitch, so I said…"

After mere minutes, everyone except Isaac, who had yet to meet her, was thoroughly tired of Magdalene's chronic inability to be quiet. Even having been dead for centuries, she still seemed to have comments on what happened the other day in Galilee, or the latest on the Roman campaigns.

The Voice stood patiently for minutes listening to Maggy, as they'd dubbed her, ramble on and on, before raising one hand and throttling her. _**"Are we listening now?"**_ he asked the bewildered Maggy. _**"Good. I'm not a fan of dragging things out, so SHUT THE HELL UP!"**_

"Yes, of course, right away, zip it up, lock it, and throw away the key! I remember the last time I was so quiet, my friends were like _'wow, she's frickin' silent!'_ and I was like, _'yeah, totally'_ and then we went fishing ad I caught this one bass that was, like, _this big_, so it…"

The Voice facepalmed, providing a modicum of amusement for the other occupants, before going back to holding a semi-normal conversation in spite of the blonde menace.

**Yeah, a bit rushed, but my computer melted and some of the notes did too.**

**Mayflower: Why isn't Judas wearing a fez? Come on, that's his trademark!**

**-Ignabar**


End file.
